An investigation into the role of public participation in achieving social justice: a case study of EIAs undertaken (under old and new regulations) in South Durban

Abstract:

ABSTRACT
Post-apartheid South Africa has included the concepts of environmental and social justice in it’s
environmental policy agenda so as to address the injustices of the past. Environmental assessment
tools like the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) have been adopted to address
environmental impacts. Participation is an important process of an EIA, which seeks to include
the marginalized in environmental decision-making. With the scaling down of the EIA process in
2006, recent debates have highlighted the implications for effective and informed public
participation. Further highlighted in these debates are a number of handicaps with regard to the
practice of effective and influential public participation in EIAs. Firstly, there has been no further
guidance on the process as compared to the 1997 EIA regulations. Secondly, the public are not
provided the opportunity to play a role in project design, resulting in participation being a mere
formality. Thirdly, the public are not included after the completion of the EIA hence the public
do not have a say on compliance to environmental management plans. This study has argued
based on evidence from four EIAs in South Durban that there is no effective and influential role
played by the public participation process as there was little to no representivity of the actual
‘public’ at public meetings in EIAs in South Durban. This is highlighted by the fact that contrary
to what is stipulated in the 2006 EIA regulations; public participation is seen and implemented as
a rigid one size fits all process especially in the South Durban region. Public meetings were the
only technique used other than those prescribed by the regulations in three out of the four EIAs.
To an extent the public participation process of EIAs under the 2006 regulations has fallen back a
notch in including the voices of the actual ‘public’ as conservative methods of participation are
being used as compared to those EIAs under the 1997 regulations. However, this has less to do
with the actual techniques used but more to do with the objective of the participation process
itself. The local context of South Durban has also played a vital role in hindering participation
with environmental and community organizations in South Durban dominating public meetings
and distancing the actual ‘public’ from influencing the decision-making process. The extent and
quality of participation in the 2006 regulations shows a shift away from an environmental justice
approach as the views of the actual ‘public’ and their representivity in influencing the decisionmaking
process was not achieved. Therefore, more emphasis needs to be placed on participatory
democratic methods of participation as compared to the current representative democratic
structures used in the environmental decision-making process in South Africa.